Chapter 40
Dual POV
The morning sunlight cut through the bay window of my mother’s cottage in wide, clean shafts of pale gold, illuminating the dust motes dancing above the scrubbed pine floorboards.
Coast and I sat together on the braided wool rug in front of the cast-iron stove, wrapped in a single, heavy fleece blanket.
He was clean, his hair damp from a hot shower, dressed in a faded red flannel work shirt he had pulled from the back of his truck.
The purple contusion along his cheekbone had softened to a dull amber; the violent tremors that had seized his limbs yesterday had vanished.
His masseter muscles were loose, his breathing slow, deep, and steady against my shoulder.
My right hand rested over my lower abdomen, feeling the quiet, persistent warmth beneath the denim of my trousers.
I didn't offer soft words. I didn't hand him an easy redemption.
I looked into his pale green eyes, holding his gaze with the same unyielding iron that had carried me through four years of survival.
"Here are my terms, Coast," I said, my voice quiet, dropping into the sunlit room with the absolute finality of an anchor hitting the seabed.
Coast didn't blink. He sat with his boots tucked beneath him, his broad shoulders squared, listening as if his life depended on every syllable.
"No more lone-wolf martyrdom," I said, each word deliberate, binding us together.
"No more absorbing punches in dark tunnels because you think you deserve to bleed for Julian.
No more keeping secrets to protect my peace.
If we are doing this—if we are raising this baby—we stand together on the blue line.
You tell me everything. You fight with me, not for me. "
Coast didn't hesitate for a fraction of a second.
He reached out, his large, calloused, scarred right hand covering mine where it rested over my lower stomach. His long fingers laced through mine, his thick palm pressing down with a gentle, immovable pressure that sealed the heat of his skin against our child.
"I swear it, Tallulah," he rasped, his voice thick with a ruined, solemn gravity that made the hair on my arms stand up. "Every dollar. Every contract. Every breath in my lungs. You have all of me. Zero secrets. From this second until they put me in the ground."
The last lingering knot of tension inside my chest dissolved on a long, slow exhale.
My pulse slowed, settling into a deep, synchronized rhythm with the heavy beat of his heart behind his flannel shirt. For the first time since the two pink lines appeared on the plastic wands, the cold nausea in my throat vanished, replaced by an immovable, profound stillness.
I leaned my cheek against his jaw, feeling the scratch of his clean stubble. "Good," I whispered. "Now take me to bed."
* * *
I didn't let her feet touch the floorboards.
I stood up from the braided rug, sliding my forearms under her back and knees, lifting her feather-light frame against my chest in a single, fluid motion.
She looped her arms around my neck, her honey-dark eyes soft with an unfiltered, unarmored surrender that made my sternum ache with sudden, overwhelming devotion.
I carried her down the sunlit hallway into the small guest bedroom at the back of the cottage.
The room smelled of dried lavender and fresh pine, the morning light pouring across clean white cotton sheets.
I laid her down in the center of the mattress with an agonizing, reverent slowness, following her down so my 228-pound frame hovered over hers, taking my full weight on my forearms so I didn't compress her ribs.
She looked up at me, her dark hair fanning over the white pillowcase, her small hands coming up to frame the sides of my neck, her thumbs smoothing over the scar on my collarbone.
I reached down, unbuttoning the red flannel shirt, tossing it onto the floorboards. Then, with deliberate, slow care, I gathered the hem of her gray thermal shirt, peeling the cotton over her head, unbuttoning her trousers and sliding them down her legs until she was bare beneath the warm sunlight.
Her skin was porcelain, flushed with a delicate, fevered gold in the morning rays.
I sat back on my heels between her parted knees, looking down at her body.
Her lower abdomen was still flat, but beneath the smooth, soft skin of her belly, the slight, microscopic swell of our child lived.
My breath caught in my windpipe.
My large hands came down, resting flat over her hipbones, my calloused thumbs meeting over the center of her womb.
The contrast made my vision blur with sudden, scalding moisture—my scarred, violent hands, the hands that had broken bones on the ice, resting over the fragile, sacred life we had created in the dark.
I leaned down, pressing my lips to her lower stomach.
The kiss was slow, scorching, and deep. I tasted the salt of her skin, my stubble grazing her abdomen as my chest heaved against her thighs.
"Look at what we made, Tallulah," I rasped against her belly, my voice shaking with a thick, possessive reverence. "Look at what belongs to us."
Tallulah’s fingers tangled into the dark hair at the nape of my neck, pulling me upward, her chest heaving on a soft, ragged gasp. "Coast... look at me."
I rose over her, settling my weight between her thighs with an unhurried, measured patience that made her hips lift off the cotton sheets.
Our gazes locked.
I entered her with slow, agonizing gentleness, my hips rocking forward in a deep, grounding glide that drew a long, shuddering sob of pure release from her throat.
The friction was thick, liquid heat, every nerve ending in my body locking onto her cadence.
"Good girl," I growled against her parted lips, my tongue sweeping deep, claiming her mouth while my large hands anchored her waist to the mattress. "Such a good girl for me. Take all of it, sweetheart."
"Coast," she wept against my mouth, her heels locking around the backs of my thighs, her hips arching to meet every slow, powerful drive of my body. "You're my home. You're everything."
"You're my whole life, Tallulah," I whispered, the vow driven home into bone and marrow as our bodies moved in flawless, sacred unison. "All mine. Forever."
We crested together under the bright Adirondack sun, her muscles clamping tight around me in long, trembling waves of release, my forehead pressed hard against her neck as my control shattered in a low, ruined groan that poured my soul into her skin.
* * *
The flashbulbs in the Grand Ballroom of the Boston Marriott Copley Place fired in blinding, rapid-fire bursts, the glare reflecting off forty television camera lenses and thirty chrome microphone stands.
It was 11:00 AM on Monday, April 6. Five days before the Frozen Four National Championship game in St. Paul.
The room was packed with two hundred sports journalists, ESPN commentators, and the entire executive board of the Boston Bruins. At the flanking tables sat Coach Bramwell Hayes, Director Aris Thorne, and Senior Scout Grant Wesley.
The media scrum was buzzing with the scandal that had rocked collegiate hockey two weeks ago: the public expulsion and arrest of Derek Mercer for electronic wire fraud, the dismissal of Arthur Cross’s extortion claims, and the full administrative exoneration of Garrison’s kinesiology department.
The heavy curtain at the side of the stage parted.
Coast stepped out into the light.
He wore a tailored charcoal three-piece suit, cut sharp across the massive, 228-pound breadth of his shoulders, his dark hair combed back, his jaw clean-shaven and set in stone.
He didn't walk alone.
His large, calloused, scarred right hand was clasped tight around Tallulah’s fingers.
Tallulah walked at his side, her head held high, her spine straight as an iron rod. She wore an emerald silk tea-length dress that skimmed the soft, beautiful curve of her lower abdomen, her dark curls pinned back with the tarnished gold comb from her mother's wedding day.
Her chin was tilted at that sharp, lethal forty-five-degree angle, her honey-dark eyes sweeping the sea of cameras with an untouchable, radiant composure that silenced the whispers in the front row.
Coast didn't drop her hand to take the podium.
He stepped to the microphones, adjusting the stand with his left hand, keeping his right fingers locked through hers, resting their joined hands in plain sight on the wooden riser.
"Good morning," Coast rasped.
His voice was a low, commanding rumble that cut through the room like a whistle on fresh ice.
"Forty-eight hours ago, I executed my standard three-year Entry-Level Contract with the Boston Bruins," Coast announced, his pale green eyes cutting through the flashbulbs with absolute certainty.
"The contract terms reflect a full, mutual commitment to the franchise.
But more importantly, the terms reflect my life. "
He turned his head slightly, his gaze locking with Tallulah’s face, his thumb smoothing over her knuckles with an unyielding, public devotion.
"I will be based in Massachusetts because my partner, Tallulah Barry, has accepted a fully funded graduate research fellowship at Northeastern University's Sports Science Institute," Coast said, his words echoing through the national broadcast without a single trace of apology.
"Her academic career is the foundation of our family.
We stand together on the blue line. We are not negotiable. Thank you."
The press room detonated into a roar of shouted questions, cameras flashing in a whiteout storm.
Coast didn't answer a single reporter.
He turned his back on the podium, his large hand sliding down to the small of Tallulah’s back, guiding her off the stage into the private corridor.
In the dim quiet behind the curtain, he stopped.
He pulled her into his chest, his large hands framing her jaw, his green eyes blazing with an indestructible, ironclad victory that made the noise of the arena fade into dust.
"We won, sweetheart," he murmured against her lips.
"We won," Tallulah whispered, smiling through her tears as she pressed his hand over the heartbeat living beneath her emerald dress.